Amy Lee Lillard is co-host of a feminist book podcast, and also an author; her first book, Dig Me Out, a collection of short stories, was published in 2021. Now 44, she lives in Des Moines, Iowa in the USA and was diagnosed autistic just last year. She wrote her book before she was aware of her autism, and found afterwards that she had essentially written a collection of autistic characters, without intending to. She says: “I write about the intersections of gender, sexuality and the patriarchy,...
May 14, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Season 6Ep. 68
Rhonda Moore is a medical anthropologist in her early 50s. After self diagnosing as autistic in 2019, she was formally diagnosed the following year. She spent her childhood in Chicago, USA, and now lives in Bethesda, Maryland, where she is Program Director in Global Mental Health at NIH (the National Institutes of Health, the main US government agency responsible for public health research). She has a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from Stanford University and postdoctoral fellowships from Stanfor...
Mar 26, 2022•55 min•Season 5Ep. 67
Chloe Slater was diagnosed autistic aged 25, and has been in the mental health system since the age of 16, where she says she has experienced ‘awful treatment, amazing care, and everything in between’. Content warning: Chloe and I cover some challenging topics in this episode, including eating disorders, self harm, medical trauma, suicidal ideation and suicide. So if you would rather not hear about these topics, you might not want to listen to this one. Now 34, Chloe lives in Stroud, Gloucesters...
Mar 19, 2022•59 min•Season 5Ep. 66
Nesceda Blake is a performing arts producer and creative energiser from Melbourne, Australia. In a bit of a departure from my usual guests, she was diagnosed very early, at just three years old. I found her insights as an early diagnosed woman fascinating - and I was struck by how familiar and relatable her experiences still were. We met on LinkedIn, after I came across a post about her experiences with recruiters which had gone viral. After leaving a job with an autism organisation, she had sta...
Mar 12, 2022•59 min•Season 5Ep. 65
Aisling Walsh is a queer feminist freelance writer and translator and PhD candidate living in Guatemala City. She is 37 and was diagnosed autistic in December 2021 and is self-diagnosed with ADHD. She was also diagnosed with epilepsy at 23, but now suspects that her seizures might actually be dissociative seizures linked to autistic shutdown. Aisling has spent over seven years working in communications, advocacy and activism with international development organisations, including the UN, in coun...
Mar 05, 2022•57 min•Season 5Ep. 64
Kira Young is a Native American poet, philosopher, activist and singer from Virginia, USA. She is 52 and was formally diagnosed very recently, after self diagnosing last year. She has held various different roles, both in corporations and the US Government, but her direct communication style and personal and professional integrity have often led to clashes with authority. She is now in the process of transitioning to making a living from her many passions. In our conversation we talk about: ➡ Me...
Feb 26, 2022•56 min•Season 5Ep. 63
Victoria is an autistic blogger and PhD student from Manchester in the UK. Diagnosed autistic aged 25, she started an Instagram account and blog called ‘Actually Aspling’ the same year, in 2017. Victoria also has dyslexia, dyspraxia, epilepsy and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. She has an MSc in Psychology and is currently a PhD student in autism research. In our conversation we talked about: ➡ Masking, mirroring and empathy ➡ Friendships and bullying ➡ Getting accommodations as a uni student ➡ Autism...
Feb 19, 2022•54 min•Season 5Ep. 62
Marie Ralph is an autistic, disabled single mum to two neurodivergent sons. She is 48 and was diagnosed five years ago. She lives in Newquay, Cornwall in the UK, where as well as being a full time carer, she is Director of Youth Art Connect and Cornwall Tourettes and Tic Disorder Group. Marie has spent countless hours fighting for equality, promoting anti ableism in education and organisations, and provide training and support in all things neurodivergent. She strives to change perceptions of wh...
Feb 12, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Season 5Ep. 61
Suzanna Chen was born in China and raised in Vancouver, Canada from the age of 9. She was diagnosed autistic in her final year of high school. She is now 18 and an undergraduate student at University College London in the UK. Standing at the intersection of gender, racial, and ability minorities, she is passionate about advocating for the overlooked intersectionality of social justice issues. She writes for popular student magazine The Tab, and is a staff writer at the youth-led advocacy publica...
Feb 05, 2022•42 min•Season 5Ep. 60
Gilly McKeown is an autism researcher in Brisbane, Australia. Originally from Manchester in the UK, she is in her thirties and was diagnosed autistic in 2021, when she was already more than halfway through her PhD in autism. She also has suspected ADHD, and is a single parent to her young autistic and ADHD daughter. Like many autistic people she has pursued various different courses and degrees, including doing a degree in speech therapy, and at the time we recorded this episode she was just com...
Jan 29, 2022•58 min•Season 5Ep. 59
Lucy Pearce is an author, artist and publisher from East Cork in Ireland. She is 41, and when she was 37 she, her mother and her daughter were all diagnosed autistic within 6 months of each other. Lucy is the author of ten non-fiction books for women, focusing on women’s healing, and founded her own publishing company in 2014 to offer support to new women authors whose books are often ignored by the mainstream publishing industry. Not knowing at the time that she was autistic, she has since real...
Jan 22, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Season 5Ep. 58
Amanda Harrinauth is a disability empowerment coach and poet from California, USA. She was born premature, weighing just 1 pound 7ounces. She had hydrocephalus and other health problems, and her parents were told she was unlikely to survive beyond a few days, and that if she did, she would need to be institutionalised. But against all the odds she survived - and her parents made the decision to raise her at home. She is now 32. She spent her childhood in and out of hospitals, suffered seizures a...
Jan 15, 2022•58 min•Season 5Ep. 57
Sara Gibbs has built a successful career, but also – like so many of us – experienced the challenges of being in the world as an autistic person. After enduring vicious bullying and social exclusion during her school days, and having some pretty horrendous experiences in the workplace, she decided to become a writer. After taking a comedy writing course she has since written for Dead Ringers, The News Quiz, The Daily Mash, The Now Show, The Mash Report and Have I Got News for You. She is also th...
Jan 08, 2022•1 hr•Season 5Ep. 56
Helen Evans is Chief Executive of the PDA Society. She was diagnosed autistic aged 39 in October 2020, two years after her son, who has a PDA (Pathological Demand Avoidance) profile. She grew up in South London, and now lives in Oxfordshire. From 2012 to 2015 Helen was Global Head of Safeguarding at Oxfam, and tried to get the organisation to tackle issues of systemic sexual abuse perpetrated by Oxfam workers. After speaking publicly about the issue and giving evidence to MPs and the Charity Com...
Nov 13, 2021•50 min•Season 4Ep. 55
Shannon Collins is a social worker and educator from Denver, Colorado in the United States. Now 46, she decided to pursue an autism diagnosis in 2019, after her child was diagnosed. Shannon describes herself as ‘an autistic, queer survivor of sexual and physical violence’ and has spent over 20 years working to end domestic violence and sexual assault through advocacy, prevention and education. She now specialises in the formation of trauma-informed victim advocacy programs in higher education in...
Nov 06, 2021•56 min•Season 4Ep. 54
Kelly Coons was diagnosed autistic as a teenager, and at 20 is both my youngest guest to date and my only guest so far to have been diagnosed in childhood. She lives in the United States and is a prize-winning fourth year English student at Smith College, a liberal arts college in New England. Kelly has two autistic brothers, one of whom is her twin, who were both diagnosed before she was, and who were the inspiration for her debut young adult novel, a coming-of-age story about two autistic youn...
Oct 30, 2021•55 min•Season 4Ep. 53
Ann Mølgaard is a teacher at a sixth form college in Copenhagen in Denmark. She is 34 and was diagnosed autistic and ADHD in May this year, after being told that her initial referral had been declined because she was “too high functioning”. Since her diagnosis, she has chosen to be open about her neurodivergence with her colleagues and students. In our conversation we talk about: ➡ Getting a diagnosis in Denmark ➡ Childhood bullying and feeling left out at school ➡ Losing herself through a lifet...
Oct 23, 2021•58 min•Season 4Ep. 52
Suzi Payton is a life coach, stand-up comedian, comedy improvisation teacher and autism trainer from Brighton in the UK. She is 46 and has been diagnosed with ‘clinically significant autistic traits’, but believes that her lifelong masking has prevented her from receiving a full diagnosis. She does have a diagnosis of inattentive ADHD. When her 17-year teaching career ended after she experienced workplace bullying and gaslighting she became self employed, and she now coaches other neurodivergent...
Oct 16, 2021•49 min•Season 4Ep. 51
Carolyn Gage is a American playwright, performer, director, and activist. She was diagnosed autistic last year, at the age of 68. She is the author of twelve books and close to 90 lesbian and feminist themed plays, and her work is widely published and performed. Carolyn toured for 22 years in her internationally-acclaimed one-woman show, The Second Coming of Joan of Arc. She has won numerous awards, including the Lambda Literary Award in Drama for best LGBT books in the US. She was born in Virgi...
Oct 09, 2021•59 min•Season 4Ep. 50
Sophie Adamkiewicz was born in Poland, but was brought up in Germany after her mother emigrated there when the Berlin wall fell, and she says that she has felt like an outsider all her life. At the time of our rerecording she was living in Ireland, but was about to move to London. She is 37, and is currently self-diagnosed and on the waiting list for her autism and ADHD assessments. She has worked in freelance video and CGI production, as a producer at a Fortune 500 company and been Head of Stud...
Oct 02, 2021•59 min•Season 4Ep. 49
Kathy Carter is a writer and neurodiversity-affirming hypnotherapist. She was diagnosed autistic herself in 2017, after realising that her son was probably autistic. She in her 40s and lives in Kent in the UK. She works with neurodivergent, highly sensitive and anxious clients and her hypnotherapy is adapted to autistic needs. She has recently been appointed Neurodivergence Advisor to Therapy Today, the journal of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. Their Advisory Board is...
Sep 25, 2021•1 hr•Season 4Ep. 48
Yenn Purkis is an inspirational autistic and non-binary author, advocate, public speaker and community leader from Canberra in Australia. They also have a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Their journey has taken them from serving time in prison, poverty and rejecting their autism diagnosis, to self acceptance, advocacy and a successful career. They are the author of nine published books on autism (soon to be ten!), including one for transgender and autistic adults. They are also a public speaker and ...
Sep 18, 2021•54 min•Season 4Ep. 47
Becky Beasley is an award winning visual artist, receiving the highest UK award for Visual Arts in the country, a Paul Hamlyn Artists Award, in 2018, and also teaches Fine Art part time at Goldsmiths College. But alongside her career success she has battled with mental health and hormonal problems, prompting her to go on a research journey that ultimately lead to her autism diagnosis in February this year. Becky is in her mid 40s, lives and works in Hastings in the UK and describes herself as a ...
Sep 11, 2021•58 min•Season 4Ep. 46
Daisy Shearer is a PhD candidate in experimental condensed matter physics at the University of Surrey in the UK. She is a passionate researcher, science communicator, and educator with a drive to make STEM more accessible and inclusive, focusing on disabled and neurodivergent people. Now 25, she was diagnosed autistic at 21. I discovered her through her very popular Instagram account, Notes from the Physics Lab, where she shares snapshots of quantum tech research life and her work as a semicondu...
Sep 04, 2021•50 min•Season 4Ep. 45
Holly Smale is a multimillion-bestselling and award-winning author of young adult fiction, famous for her Geek Girl and The Valentines series of books. Geek Girl heroine Harriet Manners is a 15 year old, socially awkward girl, and Holly says that it was only after being diagnosed autistic herself at 39 that she realised that her character Harriet is also autistic - and that she had actually been writing about neurodivergence for a decade. Holly lives in Hove, in East Sussex in the UK. Holly and ...
Aug 28, 2021•1 hr•Season 4Ep. 44
Jo Casey is a business coach for quirky, artisanal business owners (think coaches, healers and makers) who want to build a sustainable online business without any shiny, shouty nonsense. Jo is 49, lives in Manchester in the UK and was diagnosed autistic just a few weeks before our conversation, having self identified in February this year - so this is really new territory for her. But she has a really interesting take on autism and how it’s helping shape the online business world. Jo and I met o...
Jul 10, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Season 3Ep. 43
Wilma Wake was diagnosed autistic in her mid 60s. Now 74, she lives in Maine in the United States, where she is a licenced clinical social worker and retired ordained minister. Despite working with autistic people, she never thought she might be autistic herself until she read a book that changed her life. She became active in an autistic adults’ peer support group after her diagnosis, and is now co-facilitator of the group. Her social work practice is devoted primarily to working with older aut...
Jul 03, 2021•58 min•Season 3Ep. 42
Luize is self diagnosed. She’s 26 and lives in Latvia, where an autism diagnosis is not available for adults. She briefly studied medicine at university, before switching to Sociology. She has spent time volunteering abroad with animal rights and environmental organisations, where for the first time she felt a sense of belonging, despite the challenges of living and working in a group situation in a different country. While abroad she gradually realised she is autistic. In my conversation with L...
Jun 26, 2021•1 hr 1 min•Season 3Ep. 41
Bernard Grant first identified as autistic in 2012, but it wasn’t until 2020, at the start of the pandemic, that they finally fully accepted this. Now 35, they are a writer and editor in Cincinnati, Ohio in the United States, where they recently finished a PhD in Creative Writing and Comparative Literature. They are nonbinary and asexual. In our conversation we talk about: ➡ Coming to terms with being autistic ➡ Autistic experiences of Covid-19 lockdown ➡ How autism and gender intersect ➡ Academ...
Jun 19, 2021•58 min•Season 3Ep. 40
My guest this week is a 39 year old autistic mum from Cheshire in the UK, who identifies as fitting the PDA profile. She is a certified Forest Bathing Guide and is training to become a Nature Therapy Practitioner. She believes that nature connection can help Neurodivergent people form a strong personal identity and help combat burnout and overwhelm. She is also interested in the links between autistic burnout and physical illness, after developing chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia and Conversion Dis...
Jun 12, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Season 3Ep. 39
